Yo-Yo Ma reflects on the role of arts, creativity and the edges of life. His comments are adapted from a conversation with WorldPost.
In our highly interdependent global civilization, a lot of things are not working.
When I travel around the country and the world to perform, I pick up in my many conversations a growing sense that the first Enlightenment — which posited the rule of reason over emotion and feelings — is getting a little creaky, confining and even counterproductive.
The neurobiologist Antonio Damasio has written about Descartes’ error that, to put it in shorthand, “I think therefore I am.” Damasio instead makes the compelling argument, empirically based in neurology, that feeling and emotions as expressed in art and music play a central role in high-level cognitive reasoning.
James' World 2 
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